![]() Herzberg famously said: “For an employee to be truly motivated, the employee’s job has to be fully enriched where the employee has the opportunity for achievement and recognition, stimulation, responsibility, and advancement.” If you’re familiar with Frederick Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory or Motivation-Hygiene Theory, you should easily spot the basis for many of these suggestions. What follows is some practical advice that will help you boost lagging morale and prevent it from dropping in the first place. If your pay levels, bonus structure, commissions and sales targets are reasonable and realistic, don’t mess with them to fix a symptom of what is most likely a very different issue. While a pay raise may work in some cases, it can also be the start of a very slippery slope towards ever-increasing sales costs. Surely if you pay people more and offer bigger financial incentives they’ll be more motivated? This is where many sales managers think they need to reach for the checkbook. Once you’ve determined your team’s morale is low, don’t focus on fault or blame. The best way to keep your finger on the pulse is by establishing a workplace culture where your team is comfortable with being proactive, honest and open about any issues or grievances as soon as they arise. If you see a spike in sick days, reps missing sales meetings or, even worse, an upturn in employee turnover, you almost certainly have a problem with your esprit de corps. When someone isn’t enjoying their job, they’ll find a reason not to do it. If laughter and conversation levels in your sales office drop significantly for an extended period, something is definitely amiss. Sales may be tough and stress-inducing at times, but it can also be fun. If someone is constantly moaning about missed targets, how they hate their job, their bosses and the company, that negativity is bound to affect your entire team and damage teamwork.ĭoom and gloom. If your team is taking longer to work through an established sales process, you’re most likely dealing with people who have stopped giving it their all.īad apple, rotten bunch. Demotivated people tend to procrastinate and may find even the simplest tasks like updating the CRM beyond them. However, it’s usually wiser to look close to home first. ![]() If a previously successful individual or team starts missing targets, the natural reaction is to look at external factors. Here are a few telltale signs of a dip in morale:Ī sudden drop in performance. While this may be understood and accepted on an intellectual level, the emotional strain is just as intense. Trying to unlock a new market segment, or targeting a new demographic altogether, could lead to a huge increase in the number of rejections a salesperson receives. However, the causes for low morale are not always so clean-cut. The most obvious, of course, is the failure to hit targets, especially if this has a direct financial effect on the sales team and overall sales goals (e.g. In most cases, a drop in enthusiasm will have a clear triggering event. Keeping an eye on team morale so you can stay ahead of dips and pick-me-up is a critical aspect of a sales manager’s job. ![]() It’s very rare that a salesperson will come straight out and say, “You know what boss? I’m really lacking motivation and just don’t feel like I’m going to make my target this month.” Spotting the downturn before it goes nuclear If left unchecked, these negative emotions can irreparably damage your team’s culture. Like a tornado, bad vibes amongst a sales team feed on themselves. Not even the most motivational sales quotes can pierce through these daytime blues. ![]() When a person feels that they’ve done everything right, applied the correct technique, backed their efforts up with skill and passion, nailed the ideal sales process and followed the sales strategy, it’s simply human nature to feel demotivated if their efforts are fruitless. Because of this, they tend to hit motivation the hardest. These factors are all beyond you and your team’s control, no matter how much hard work goes into fighting against them. However, you may also face market forces, economic slumps, seasonality, delivery issues and many other intangibles that cause a severe slump in sales. This is when the best sales managers pick their sales team up off the canvas and fire them up to smash their next round of sales objectives. You and your team will miss targets, big accounts will churn and enormous deals will fall at the final hurdle.
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